Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/241

 and Sentiments. 221 in French. In Englilli, it was changed for that of draughts, derived no doubt from the circumftance of drawing the men from one fquare to another. Our cut No. 155, taken from a manufcript in the Britilh Mufeum of the beginning of the fourteenth century, known commonly as Queen Mary's PfaUer (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), reprefents a lady and No, 155. A Game at Draughts, gentleman playing at dames, or draughts, differing only from the cha- ratter of the game at the prefent day in the circumrtance that the draughtfmen are evidently fquare. The mediaeval games were gradually fuperfeded by a new contrivance, that of playing-cards, which were introduced into Weftern Europe in the courfe of the fourteenth century. It has been fuggclled that the idea of playing-cards was taken from chefs — in faft, that they are the game of chefs transferred to paper, and without a board, and they are generally underftood to have been derived from the Eaft. Cards, while they poffeffed fome of the charafteriflics of chefs, prefented the fame mixture of chance and Ikill which diftinguilhed the game of tables. An Italian writer, probably of the latter part of the fifteenth century, named Cavel- luzzo, author of a hiftory of Viterbo, ftates that "in the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called naib." Cards are fiill in Spanilh called